1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing device and a system utilizing a head mount display (HMD).
2. Description of the Related Art
Users who deal with electronic information have carried out information processing operations using an information processing apparatus as schematically shown in FIG. 20. In the context of this specification, “information processing operation” means input, acquisition, transmission, exchange, storage, administration and the like of information carried out using a computer or the like.
An input terminal 2001 which is a keyboard, mouse or the like is a device to allow a user to perform an operation of inputting information. A controller 2002 such as a computer connected to the input terminal 2001 is a device to perform processes such as storage, calculation and communication of information. A display device 2003 such as a CRT is a device for outputting information and displaying the same as an image.
In a conventional information processing apparatus, a display device 2003 such as a CRT occupies a large part of a space on a work desk on which the information processing apparatus is operated. Further, the recent increase in the amount of information (characters, images and the like) has resulted in a need for displaying a plurality of pieces of information at a time.
In order to recognize a plurality of pieces of information with reliability, attempts have been made to increase the size of the screens of display devices. However, the volume and weight of a conventional display device such as a CRT have become considerably large with an increase in the screen size, which has made the display device unsuitable for daily use. Further, continued use for a long period of time has been avoided because it has bad influence on human eyes (fatigue, amblyopia and the like).
This has resulted in the spread of flat panel display devices whose bodies are smaller in depth and lighter than those of CRTs. Especially, products utilizing a liquid crystal panel are widely used among such flat panel displays.
Compact liquid crystal panels are portable because they are very light. Liquid crystal panels are advantageous also in that they have less influence on human eyes compared to CRTs. However, they are expensive as display devices for daily use when they are in large screen sizes because they suffer from bad yield of production.
Although flat panel displays such as liquid crystal displays have recently come in practice to replace CRTs as described above, a display of an information processing apparatus still occupies a large part of a space on a work desk.
The present invention has been conceived taking the above-described problem into consideration, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel information processing apparatus in which the above-describe problem is solved.